1. Technical Field
This invention relates generally to an electronic coding system and more particularly to a multi-level data encoding system for securing identification data.
2. State of the Art
The approach to electronic security to date has been built on developing a more sophisticated encryption system. The conventional standard for credit card encryption coding has been the RSA model. RSA's approach is to use two numerical keys. One is a public key, which is known by sender and credit provider. Only the sender knows the other key, the private key. The two keys are required to be activated simultaneously to enable secure transactions to occur. While encryption certainly is important and useful, the fundamental vulnerability of the system remains; namely, all critical data (the customer account number) is located in one place, in the encrypted double-keyed data signature. Negotiation of the double-keyed signature allows access to the critical data.
The RSA model has limitations noted as early as 1995. An article, “Picking the Crypto Locks,” appeared in the October 1995 issue of BYTE magazine pointing out that the security of the RSA encryption system is vulnerable to advances in factoring. In 1994 a 129-digit number was successfully factored utilizing the idle time of 1600 Internet connected computers with a computation algorithm called the quadratic sieve. A newer and faster general number field sieve promises to factor a 512-bit number over ten times faster. And massively parallel computer advances are increasing computational power by a factor of ten every five years, making a 1280 bit encryption key vulnerable to factoring.
Code-breakers tested 88 billion possible combinations every second for fifty six (56) hours until they unlocked a message scrambled using a government-approved method called the Data Encryption Standard (“DES”). This was done with the brute force of a single, custom-built computer. It is believed that a 6 by 6 inch optical computer, if built, would be able to crack the larger encrypted keys above 512 and to do it in record time. Even elliptical based algorithms become vulnerable to factoring.
Encryption has been successful to date because encryption keys have been regularly increased in size. This will work as long as computer speeds do not reach the speed levels required to factor the increased encryption key sizes. However, when general computing speeds increase to the point where key factoring is no longer a prohibitive task encryption utilized to secure electronic transaction data will no longer be a secure process.
Accordingly, there is a need in the field of electronic coding systems for an improved electronic coding system that does not have the limitations of conventional key encryption technology.